Big Bang Beam: Large Hadron Collider Restarts After Two-Year Break

Researchers have begun circulating beams of protons in the Large Hadron Collider after a two-year shutdown for upgrades — and they expect to ramp up quickly to reach uncharted frontiers in particle physics.

“Beam went smoothly through the whole machine. It’s fantastic to see it going so well after two years and such a major overhaul of the LHC,” Rolf Heuer, the director general of Europe’s CERN particle physics center, said Sunday in a statement.

The LHC’s control team sent waves of protons in both directions around the 17-mile-round (27-kilometer-round) ring, situated 300 feet (100 meters) beneath the French-Swiss border near Geneva.